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Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

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Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#71

Post by chrisco255 »

valray wrote: post #51

The notion of decentralized identity has been an enchanting vision since Christopher Allen first articulated it in 2016. Since then, DID spec has been around for years in draft form, and there are at least a dozen vendors and/or projects producing DID-compatible or DID-relevant technology. Of course, these different packages are not (yet) compatible, but that's not the problem. The problem is that, after a good 4 or…

The SIWE movement probably will win out, imo. Brave already supports it natively, and services like ENS are growing in popularity and use cases. And MetaMask itself is already at 50 million installs. Most other smart contract blockchains are Ethereum compatible, so you can use the same account (via MetaMask or wallet of your choice) across blockchains pretty easily. It's also dead simple to implement as a web developer, and it's a pleasure to use as a user.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#72

Post by mtsr »

EGreg wrote: post #67
jiggawatts wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On second reading with that background knowledge, the crypto pedigree reveals itself: "decentralized", "distributed", "independently of any centralized registry", "distributed ledger", "non-registry based", etc... It all makes sense now! It's yet another attempt at making Web 3.0 happen. Sigh...

Why sigh? Why are Bitcoin maxis and HN Web 2.0 people so intent on keeping everyone from advancing to the next phases of the Web? Do you like centralized VC-funded “cloud”-hosted startups incubated in Silicon Valley that get gobbled up by big tech or dumped on the public? You like the extreme power inequality between those who run these systems and the public? You think the best our systems can do is extract rents at…

It might have something to do with all the cryptobro’s pushing get-rich-quick-schemes. Crypto-enthusiasts ignore how regulations existed for good reasons before regulatory capture made a mess of things. Not everyone likes the idea of an anarchocapitalist future.

And I’m not even talking about the outright scamming and the fact that most crypto’s primary use case is criminal. Or the environmental issues of spending energy we can’t spare on something we could solve so many other ways.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#73

Post by high_5 »

Taek wrote: post #6

I've been following DID for a while and I really don't think its the right approach. The voices of concern from Mozilla and Google are spot on: the DID specs expect everyone to coordinate on finding the right structure for different types of data but the real world is messy and no "correct" structure exists. DID in my opinion is unlikely to succeed. Real builders don't use it, because it is cumbersome and requires ag…

> DID in my opinion is unlikely to succeed.

Probably a few big tech companies will form a consortium and use their weight for setting a de-facto standard.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#74

Post by vxNsr »

bawolff wrote: post #15

A standard flexible enough where you can do literally anything is usually a bad standard. The point of standards is to write up some small-ish base that everyone can agree on so that people can talk to each other. A standard containing everything where each implementation implements a different incompatible subset, is a failure.

3 sentences on why usb type-c/usb3/usb4/thunderbolt are a failure.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#75

Post by bawolff »

hinkley wrote: post #65
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, too much flexibility ends up being a security nightmare. This building so much flexibility into protocols seems like a 90s holdover. We are realizing that the more moving parts you have, the more edge cases you have, and the more attack surface area.

I guess we'll find out if they have learned anything since the XML Signature specification. That was an adventure, trying to find a subset that actually did what it said it did.

XMLSignature is one of the worst security standards i have ever read.

Do we sign the bytes of the document? No, we canonicalize it first? How do we canonicalize? Multiple ways. Do all documents with the same canonicalization have the same DOM? No. Which part of the document do we sign? Up to you.

Its a wonder there aren't more major saml breaches.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#76

Post by bawolff »

jiggawatts wrote: post #42
WaylonKenning wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer - I work in this space, but these words are my own). My understanding is DIDs are a unique identifier. There's a few methods that can be used regarding the construction of the identifier. It could be a unique key (did:key- https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-key/ ). It could be using web infrastructure (did:web - https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-web/ ). It could be using blockchain infrastructure (di…

On second reading with that background knowledge, the crypto pedigree reveals itself: "decentralized", "distributed", "independently of any centralized registry", "distributed ledger", "non-registry based", etc... It all makes sense now! It's yet another attempt at making Web 3.0 happen. Sigh...

9 billion buzzwords for basically "url-like string that starts with a vendor prefix"

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#77

Post by quickthrower2 »

tnzk wrote: post #61
cratermoon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have heard the aphorism, "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection." This, or some variation of it, is known as the fundamental theorem of software engineering, variously attributed to Andrew Koenig, Butler Lampson, and David J. Wheeler. With oauth2, literally any sort of authorization (or, in theory, authentication) is possible, but first you have to ask some endpoint fo…

> despite the name, oauth2 is not about authentication, it's only about authorization OAuth is short for Authorization in the first place. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6749

What a brilliant and unambiguous abbreviation!

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#78

Post by quickthrower2 »

high_5 wrote: post #73
Taek wrote: post #6

I've been following DID for a while and I really don't think its the right approach. The voices of concern from Mozilla and Google are spot on: the DID specs expect everyone to coordinate on finding the right structure for different types of data but the real world is messy and no "correct" structure exists. DID in my opinion is unlikely to succeed. Real builders don't use it, because it is cumbersome and requires ag…

> DID in my opinion is unlikely to succeed. Probably a few big tech companies will form a consortium and use their weight for setting a de-facto standard.

Putting the centralized in decentralized.

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#79

Post by quickthrower2 »

IceHegel wrote: post #60
aasasd wrote: post #44

Wow, the person who wrote that text has some talent for bureaucratese. It's comparatively rare to see that in English, since the language tends toward clear verbs and the active voice. But here I had to re-read a bunch of sentences to figure out what refers to what, while wondering if I need to take a coffee break. I would say that the author probably moonlights as a writer for NYT or something—if the dryness of the…

> It is not questioned that any single DID method might fail to achieve one or more of these properties. The consideration here is whether the proposed DID identifier syntax and associated mechanisms has been sufficiently shown to have defined an extensible class of identifiers that has these properties. This paragraph gave me temporary brain fog. I think it's saying that so long as the proposed syntax is flexible en…

Maybe like saying any HTML element alone can’t build you say… Slack, but with a bunch of them you can.

Tldr: it is lego?

Re: Mozilla and Google Objections Overruled on “Decentralized Identifiers” by W3C

#80

Post by [deleted] »

EGreg wrote: post #67
jiggawatts wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On second reading with that background knowledge, the crypto pedigree reveals itself: "decentralized", "distributed", "independently of any centralized registry", "distributed ledger", "non-registry based", etc... It all makes sense now! It's yet another attempt at making Web 3.0 happen. Sigh...

Why sigh? Why are Bitcoin maxis and HN Web 2.0 people so intent on keeping everyone from advancing to the next phases of the Web? Do you like centralized VC-funded “cloud”-hosted startups incubated in Silicon Valley that get gobbled up by big tech or dumped on the public? You like the extreme power inequality between those who run these systems and the public? You think the best our systems can do is extract rents at…

[deleted]
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